Carl M. Marcy Chief of Staff Foreign Relations Committee, 1955-1973

Interview #8 Leaving the Committee (Wednesday, November 16, 1983) Interviewed by Donald A. Ritchie

RITCHIE: You said you wanted to write an article about committee hearings?

MARCY: Yes. I just returned from a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where four very distinguished witnesses appeared. Senator Fulbright in his first appearance before the Committee since he was a senator was the lead witness. Richard Allen, Reagan's former security advisor, was there. Admiral Noel Gayler, former head of the National Security Agency, and Hal Sonnenfeld, formerly right-hand person to Kissinger, were also witnesses. Senator Percy, Senator [Richard] Lugar, and finally Senator [Claiborne] Pell showed up. Those were the only three senators who were there, and they were not all there at the same time. There were three senators and sixteen staff people sitting at various places behind senators' empty chairs. I don't know what comes out of a hearing like that. The testimony is printed but seldom read. There seemed to be some press coverage--we can tell more tomorrow. [There was one story featuring Senator Fulbright's appearance after years in retirement. I saw no press account of the substance of the testimony.] It's gotten to the point now where you don't have committees or subcommittees. There are in effect one-person, one-senator committees. I don't know page 237 how it is in the House, but I find it hard to see that such hearings serve any significant public purpose. It would be much better to have those four individuals on the McNeil-Lehrer show, or have them jointly interviewed and printed in the Post "Outlook" section or the "New York Times Magazine." Maybe these hearings would be of some use to a historian!

RITCHIE: Was it that way when you were staff director?

MARCY: It was much that way then. I think we did a little better at that time because Senator Fulbright and his predecessors didn't much like the idea of competing subcommittees with significant jurisdiction, or significant constituencies. If the subject was important enough for the senators to pay attention to it, it was important for al 1 of them, or most of them, to be present. As it is now, it's such a fragmented process. Individual senators sometimes use a subcommittee like a lottery. They hold a hearing on some subject and see who comes. Does the press cover it? As a result there are a lot of hearings held that Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

nobody ever hears anything about, nobody pays attention, and even the senators who set them up don't pay much attention. They try a hearing, it doesn't strike a fire, and the result is that the subject is dropped.

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RITCHIE: Well, what's the purpose? For instance, today's hearing: what's the motivation there? It's to generate interest in the subject, but they can't even generate interest among their own members.

MARCY: That's right. If there is any subject that should be of interest to every member of the Foreign Relations Committee, it ought to be the present state of United States-Soviet relations. Are they going to get worse? Are they going to stay about the same? Or are they going to get better? What underlies the present state of affairs? This is the most important relationship that we have in the area of foreign policy. Sure, Grenada is important, the Middle East is important, El Salvador and Nicaragua are important. But underlying it all from the point of view of the president, is the "evil empire," that is communism. Yet we spend time worrying about the next government in Nicaragua or Grenada, and worrying about the Middle East, but in every case the fundamental problem is traced to the superpower conflict. Yet we have a hearing on the subject of the two superpowers and their relationship, and nobody shows up!

RITCHIE: Do you think the Committee spends so much time in executive session hearing what they consider to be more substantive information from people behind closed doors that they think that the public sessions are just decoration? page 239

MARCY: I think that's partly true, but my experience in the executive sessions was that by and large senators don't hear anything in executive sessions that they don't read about in the press. It sounds good to refer to information received in an executive session of the Committee. Senators and staff presumably then know more about what goes on, but the attitude of not only the previous administrations but most executive branch representatives is that they're not going to say anything to an executive session that they aren't willing to have appear in the press. So that's what they talk about. Witnesses in executive sessions discuss things that will not upset the applecart if they become public.

RITCHIE: Do you think there is any way of improving the hearings?

MARCY: That's why I said I think I'm going to write an article, so I can think about whether there is some way to improve the hearing process, to make it more effective. It strikes me that by and large they are not very effective. When was the last time that there was a significant public hearing? It goes back to the Vietnam period. Now and then, the Interior Committee gets a good turnout for a hearing Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

with Secretary [James] Watt, but too few senators come to examine the substance of an Interior policy. They might want to be present to hear a gaff by the Secretary.

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RITCHIE: I noticed in your files that at the beginning of each year you would often send a memo to Senator Fulbright outlining what you thought ought to be subjects, or could be subjects, for major hearings during the year. Maybe a half a dozen suggestions. How much planning goes into a public hearing? And when you were looking over these things at the beginning of the year, how did you think out the types of subjects you would recommend to the senator?

MARCY: Well, it depended upon what was current at the time, or what one could see was coming up. For example, if I were now planning hearings for beginning, let's say in January 1984, it seems to me that the hearings could well be focused on how to keep continuity in foreign policy during an election year? It would be a natural. One would hope to be able to establish a record and get attention to the fact that it's going to be a disaster not whether Republicans are elected or whether Democrats are elected, but it's going to be a disaster if there is not some carry-over, some continuity in the foreign policy of the nation. Otherwise, we lose the confidence of our allies and confuse our adversaries. That would be the kind of subject I think needs attention. Maybe it's too exotic.

RITCHIE: You suggested a couple of times that they hold forums for presidential candidates on foreign policy. That one never got carried out. page 241

MARCY: No, I was accustomed to throw up a lot of ideas; some did fly and some did not.

RITCHIE: Do you think that there is a lack of long-range planning and thought now that there is too much ad hoc hearings?

MARCY: I think so. It's a characteristic of Congress to be intrigued by current events. There is another thing that is lacking in the Senate, or in the Congress. It is that there is no senior, executive committee of the Senate to deal with the White House. If the president wants to call a group together, he does it. He can invite the majority leader or the minority leader, or certain others. But it does seem to me that there is a need for a means by which the Senate would have a legislative counterpart to the National Security Council. Now I realize this runs contrary to what I have said, that there has been a proliferation of subcommittees. But it ought to be possible for the president or the National Security Advisor to seek the advice of, and consult with, a counterpart group in the Senate.

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Now, what does the president do? He may create a presidential commission on some aspect of policy. I don't object to that, but there needs to be an overall core group that represents prevailing Senate views across the board, as best as it can be done. It may be that there should be (I'm just thinking aloud) a sort of a super

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Senate institution which would consist of, let's say, the chairman and the ranking minority member of each committee. Maybe that's too large a group. But now the Senate is a fragmented institution as compared with a well-run executive branch.

RITCHIE: Do you think that this is something that is inherent in the institution, or it's been developing this way, because of the reforms that have decentralized the Senate over the last twenty years?

MARCY: To some extent it is inherent in a legislative body. But at the same time one doesn't let heredity control everything. Sometimes heredity can be shaped. That's what I'm trying to think about.

RITCHIE: When you first came to the Foreign Relations Committee it really was a collection of the barons of the Senate. Most of the members of the Foreign Relations Committee were chairmen of other committees. They had long seniority in the Senate. There was sort of an "Inner Club" that ran the Senate. The president would never have thought of acting without getting in touch with the Richard Russells and the Walter Georges, who really made the decisions. Now there has been so much democratization that the Foreign Relations Committee has quite a few freshman senators. I can't think of any members right now who are chairmen of other committees --there must be a few, Senator is chairman of Agriculture. But it's a

page 243 different structure. Every senator has a subcommittee, and a subcommittee staff. Do you think that it was perhaps more effective under the older system and that the Senate reforms have been counterproductive?

MARCY: Yes, it does seem to me it was more effective at that time. Now, whether you can recreate an institution less fragmented I don't know, but I think it's worth thinking about, seeing if it could be done.

I am reminded of an incident that occurred before I was with the Committee, but with which I am familiar. When the international financial institutions were being set up, the World Bank for instance, Senator [Eugene] Milliken of Colorado was chairman of the Finance Committee, and Senator Vandenberg was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Under the Reorganization Act [of 1946] it was clear that the international financial institutions were within the jurisdiction United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But Senator Vandenberg went to Senator Milliken, and said he didn't know anything about these international financial institutions and suggested Senator Milliken take over. So without any formal decision, that was what happened. Interestingly enough, some years later when Senator Fulbright became chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, having moved to Foreign Relations from chairmanship of the Finance Committee, I went to him and told him the story that I have just told

page 244 you. I suggested that if he wanted to reclaim jurisdiction for Foreign Relations, then was the time to make it clear to the Parliamentarian. Without hesitation, Senator Fulbright said, "We'll take it." So Fulbright undid what Vandenberg had done at an earlier time.

RITCHIE: Following up on that, as chief of staff of the Foreign Relations Committee, did you keep an eye on bills that were being referred to make sure that there was no jurisdictional claim-jumping by other committees?

MARCY: Oh, absolutely. You mentioned earlier that you had talked with Floyd Riddick, the Parliamentarian. There were a number of instances when I would think a bill had been misreferred and would go to Floyd and ask if he didn't want to take another look at it "in the light." Usually that was a simple thing. Floyd had read the title of the bill and referred it, and when he would look at the substance of the bill as well as the title, and the Legislative Reorganization Act--the act the defines the jurisdictions of the committees--it would usually be a pretty open and shut case.

RITCHIE: Sometimes part of the legislative strategy of senators introducing the bill is to word it in such a way to try get it to a different committee.

MARCY: That's right.

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RITCHIE: Did you have to keep an eye out for that type of maneuver?

MARCY: Absolutely. Especially since Senator Fulbright was very conscious of the area of jurisdiction of the Foreign Relations Committee. He would always go to bat for the jurisdiction of the Committee. A few times there would be some bill that would be so clearly a confusion of the jurisdiction of the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, for example, that we would work out an arrangement, either for a sequential reference or for the committees to hold joint hearings. There were a few times in which that was done. I don't recall that we ever had any knock-down-drag-out-fights on jurisdictional questions. United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

RITCHIE: Usually a word in time to the Parliamentarian would correct things?

MARCY: That usually would take care of it, yes.

RITCHIE: Well, can we go back to where we left off in the Nixon administration? In 1971 George McGovern started running for the Democratic nomination for president and in 1972 he became the nominee. He was at the time a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, which meant he was the third member of the Foreign Relations Committee since 1960 to be the Democratic candidate.

MARCY: Yes. page 246

RITCHIE: I was wondering if you could give me some of your personal observations on McGovern, as a member, as a senator, and as a candidate. MARCY: Senator McGovern was certainly one of the nicest people I have ever known. Honest, straight-forward, soft in voice and demeanor, but firm in his convictions. I don't think at the moment of any very significant legislative role which he played in the Committee. I don't think there is a McGovern act or a McGovern amendment. I would have to say generally that his work in the Committee was not significant. I don't like to say that because I admire the man very much. But I don't remember at the moment any very significant thing.

RITCHIE: There was the McGovern-Hatfield bill on Vietnam, but Hatfield wasn't a member of the Committee.

MARCY: No, he was not.

RITCHIE: So it wasn't through the Committee. Were you as interested in McGovern's campaign in ‘72 as you were in McCarthy's in ‘68?

MARCY: I was more interested in McCarthy's campaign. it seemed like a more crucial time in the Vietnam war. But my role with the Committee was such that when a member of the Committee became a presidential candidate, that was in a completely different

page 247 department. That's not quite the right word, but when a member of the Committee became a presidential candidate he's taken over by a campaign committee, and almost everything that is done is done for a political purpose. As for the Foreign Relations Committee, I had constantly to keep in mind the fact that the Committee had members of the minority party as well as of the majority party. So it was nice to say: "Yes, he was a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and I knew him when he was just an ordinary senator before he United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

became a candidate." But after a senator became a candidate for the presidency, the relationship between staff people and the candidate dissipated.

RITCHIE: On the other hand, as a member of the Committee if he was to request information about a bill, or drafting of a speech he was going to give in the Senate on a foreign relations issue, you would still have done that as you would for any other senator?

MARCY: Yes, we would have. But the candidates of whom you were speaking were conscious of the bipartisan nature of the Committee, and that their role had changed. I don't recall an instance in which any of the candidates asked us to do particular work for them. When Jack Kennedy was a candidate he did call me personally and asked whether when he was chairman of the African Subcommittee it had ever met. I had to tell him the committee met several times but he was never there, or words to that general effect. I recall that

page 248 particular request. There may have been others like that when McGovern or McCarthy called and asked for information on attendance at a meeting or on a roll call, but we didn't draft any speeches. There may have been some members of the staff who might have done it on the side, but I doubt it.

RITCHIE: Immediately after Nixon's reelection in 1972, he became embroiled in Watergate. I remember living in Washington myself at that time and the atmosphere that pervaded everything. How much did Watergate affect the administration's relationship with the Committee and the foreign policy issues of that period?

MARCY: I think it's easier to look back and imagine that the events of that time had a significant influence on the attitudes within the Committee. It does not seem to me, however, that the Committee members were nearly as conscious of the impact of Watergate on foreign policy issues as we are inclined to believe now as we look back. The hot news was in the newspapers every day.

RITCHIE: On the other hand, the Committee and the Congress had really been engaged for several years in a running battle with Presidents Johnson and Nixon over authority. In 1972, I went to a special hearing that Sam Ervin's subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee held on presidential power. They had Arthur Schlesinger and James MacGregor Burns talking about impoundment and war powers and everything else. There was a general sense of despair that the

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Congress really wasn't going to be able to wrestle any of this authority back from the presidency. Yet within a year or two they had passed the Impoundment Act United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

and the War Powers Act and there seemed to be an attempt to shift some of the power back between the branches.

MARCY: It was certainly true with respect to War Powers. But I think that the War Powers Act came about not so much out of concern that the Senate had lost power but as a consequence of the state of the Vietnam war itself. It was the way in which the war was going, and kept going on, which seemed to me to give impetus to the War Powers Resolution. It's easy now to look back and say there was a great constitutional fight going on. But it wasn't the constitutional fight that concerned the individuals so much, it was the fact that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution had finally been recognized as what it was not supposed to be, a declaration of war. It was within that framework.

RITCHIE: Did you work at all with Senator Javits' staff on that?

MARCY: Yes, a bit, although most of the work on the War Powers Resolution was done by Peter Lakeland, and Bill Miller, who was then with Senator [] Cooper. They were more active in developing the War Powers Resolution than any member of our staff. Senator Fulbright never became very deeply involved. As long

page 250 as Javits, a Republican, was taking the lead, that was just fine. Cooper was a Republican. But my impression is that Fulbright's attitude was "Okay, Jack, go ahead, it's a good idea. Cooper, good idea, it's yours. Take it." Senator Fulbright was always a bit embarrassed by the role he had taken at the time the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed. Maybe it didn't seem quite appropriate for him then to be so active in trying to undue it, even though he subsequently realized it was a very serious mistake.

RITCHIE: In 1969 the Senate passed the resolution that basically outlined the War Powers Act, but the House wouldn't go along with it. Quite a bit in the delay seemed to be just getting the Senate and the House on the same track. We haven't talked too much about Senate-House relations when it comes to foreign policy, and I wondered if you might comment on what the general relations were between the Foreign Relations and the Foreign Affairs committees, and how difficult or easy it was to get the two to work together?

MARCY: The two committees dealt with each other at arms length. One would expect that the chairmen of the two committees would get together from time to time. I don't believe that they did. The times they would get together would be when there was a conference on a bill. There's always a little bit of jealously between the two. I think the jealousies originated mostly from the House side, because they would do something that they thought was

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page 251 important and nobody would pay any attention to them. And then the Senate committee might do exactly the same thing and there would be big press coverage. Yet when it came to the generation of amendments, the members of the House were just as bright and original, and I always thought they had more time to spend on these issues than did the senators, who had much larger constituencies to worry about. Staff relationships were very good. During most of this period Boyd Crawford was the staff director of the House Committee, and Boyd and I had no problems. We would discuss things informally when problems arose, but we never particularly sought each other out--although we did see each other from time to time socially as well as occasionally for lunches, that kind of thing.

I don't know whether I mentioned earlier in our discussion about the one big compromise that Boyd Crawford and I pulled off, which was to get the Fulbright- Hays act out of conference without Fulbright and Hays having met each other after the first disastrous confrontation.

RITCHIE: No, what was the first disastrous confrontation?

MARCY: Actually, the Foreign Relations Committee had decided that it would be a good idea to take a look at the original Fulbright act and subsequent legislation to see if it could be improved and should be brought up to date. Our staff spent a summer working on it, and developed into what later became the Fulbright-Hays Act. The bill went through the Senate very handily with Fulbright prestige,

page 252 and it went to the House which didn't take it up. I had gotten to know Congressman Wayne Hays quite well. He was chairman of the subcommittee dealing with educational and cultural exchanges. I went to him one day and said, "If you will put this thing before your committee and get it moving, we will not have a Fulbright Act, we will have a Fulbright-Hays Act." I said, "I can't guarantee this, but I will talk about a Fulbright-Hays Act in the future." I never did ask Senator Fulbright whether this was a good idea or not, so I've always felt a little guilty about making this statement public. Anyway, the House passed its version of the Fulbright-Hays Act, which had some significant differences, and we went to conference to iron out the differences, with Fulbright on one side of the table, backed up by his members, and Wayne Hays the leader of the House, side. I do not remember what the issue was, but the meeting had not gone on for very long before Wayne Hays blew his top--or it may have been the other way, maybe Fulbright did--in any event, one or other of them stood up and said, "Well, I will not participate in this conference any longer as long as the attitude is this way." Whereupon the other chairman stood up and said, "Well, I beat you to it, because United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

I was already trying to get out of the room." And that was it. So all of this work for the Fulbright-Hays Act was going down the drain. Boyd Crawford and I got together and decided that, after he had checked with Wayne Hays and I had checked with Senator Fulbright, they were not about to go back into conference to confront each other

page 253 again. So Boyd and I worked out the conference report, completely. When we were satisfied with what was in the bill, we each took the conference report, went to our respective chairmen and got them to sign it. I remember Senator Fulbright saying, "Will Wayne take it?" I said, "Yes, I think he will take it this way." Fulbright then asked if he had to meet with Wayne Hays again. I said, "No, just sign. He signed, and then the rest of the Senate conferees went along, and the same thing happened on the House side. So the Fulbright-Hays Act, the differences of which were resolved in conference, were differences which were resolved by Boyd Crawford and myself.

RITCHIE: And their names are wedded together forever!

MARCY: And their names are were wedded but not forever since Wayne Hays left the House in rather disrepute. References are now more often to the Fulbright Act. Although I must say with the new administration I don't think President Reagan or Mr. [Charles Z.] Wick, who's in charge of implementing the act, particularly welcome the name Fulbright either.

RITCHIE: There was a little piece in the paper just recently about a congressional staff member who checked with the Pentagon about the cost of a new missile, and was informed that its price was $40 million. The staff member said, "For that price we could triple

page 254 the number of Fulbright scholars." The Pentagon official said, "Yes, but those Fulbright scholars don't do a damn thing when you drop them on a bridge from 20,000 feet."

MARCY: What a thought!

RITCHIE: We've reached the point now, in 1973, when you decided to retire from the Committee. You'd been on the Committee since 1950, and Senator Fulbright was still the chairman.

MARCY: The first point to make is that I decided to retire before I knew whether Senator Fulbright was going to be renominated or not. I was influenced by the fact that it was a good time to retire from the point of view of future annuity United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

benefits, since I had had thirty-plus years in the government. For a long time I had resented seeing staff directors, like Jay Sourwine, to use a name, who had been around for twenty-five or thirty years and were decrepit old men, servicing young, vigorous incoming senators. So when some of the members of the Foreign Relations Committee were younger than I, I was uneasy. I didn't feel that it was quite appropriate for an older person to be in this staff role. There was another factor, and that was that Pat Holt had been in the number two spot for a long time. While I don't mean to sound like a philanthropist in turning it over to him, nevertheless it did seem to me that I had been holding a lot of people back for a long time--although before I left, I had talked with Pat about whether he would take over. He said he didn't think

page 255 he would be interested. So I suggested Norvill Jones to Senator Fulbright. He asked, "What about Pat?" I told him just what I have told you. But after that, Pat came to me and said he'd been thinking about it, and if there was going to be a successor he thought maybe he'd better be staff director, so that was the way it was resolved. It was no great issue, we just operated on the basis that Pat had been there longer, had more experience, knew the people, and was an extremely competent individual. Those were all factors that influenced me.

RITCHIE: And Norvill Jones eventually became staff director.

MARCY: Norvill after that took over from Pat, yes.

RITCHIE: Did you have any anticipation that Senator Fulbright wouldn't be reelected in 1974?

MARCY: No, none at all. I had some personal projects that I was working on. There were things that I liked to do, such as rebuilding a mast on my son's boat. I left the Committee as of the first of January 1974, but continued as a consultant for a period of six months. I took a back office. Pat took the front office. I took my files with me to sort them out and think for six months what, if anything, I might do in the future. But I was available to the senators. But once the shift is made, it's made. There's not much one can do about it. I recall only having one real Committee page 256 assignment during that period when I was in a consultant status, and that was a speech for Senator Mansfield. Other than that I twiddled my thumbs and looked at my papers and contemplated the future, and came in three days a week instead of five, and didn't worry about who was going to testify or when or what senators would show up. It was a decompression period which I liked very much. I have never regretted having left, may I say. It might be that I would have regretted if Senator Fulbright had been renominated and elected, but that was not a factor. United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

RITCHIE: Fulbright set the record for the longest service as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and I suspect that you set the record as the longest serving staff director.

MARCY: I suspect so. And the way it looks, that's the way it's going to be for a long time! We may hold these longevity records into perpetuity. It seems to me that change comes much more rapidly now than in the past.

RITCHIE: Speaking of Senator Fulbright, I wanted to ask you what you thought about why he was defeated in 1974. It seems like a lot of members of the Foreign Relations Committee are vulnerable to charges that they've lost touch with their constituents to worry about world issues. I noticed a memo in your files about Senator Percy, when he came on the Committee, very early on this comment had been made about him, and you had prepared a little defense for him as

page 257 to how foreign relations relate to domestic issues. Do you think that members of the Committee are more politically vulnerable?

MARCY: That's the general belief. In Senator Fulbright's case I don't believe there was anything that he did in the area of foreign policy that turned off his constituency. I think he had lost touch with his constituency, not primarily because he was involved in foreign policy issues, but because he was not as well known to his constituency as was Governor [Dale] Bumpers. I'm sure if you looked at the press of Arkansas, you would find that Bumpers was mentioned two or three times compared to Senator Fulbright. I've often thought that it's hard for a senator in Washington to make headlines with respect to things that concern people in a state. Senators from Virginia or Maryland have a much easier time. Take Senator [Charles] Mathias, for example, anything he says on the national scene is immediately read by a large number of people within his state. But when Senator Fulbright said something it might make page 3 or 4 in the Arkansas Gazette. I think there may also have been some question of financial support having fallen off for Senator Fulbright. I really can't talk to that. I have heard implications that he had alienated Jewish constituents or Jewish money, but whether there's anything to that or not I just don't know. I don't know what the figures were, whether he was running out of money or not. I do know that at one point the polls did show he was running behind Bumpers even before Fulbright had announced he was going to run again. I recall a

page 258 conversation with Senator Fulbright in which he said he realized he probably would not be renominated, but he said, "It is very hard to pull out voluntarily because there are so many people who are counting on you--the people in your office, your friendly constituents back home, people who have supported you in United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

the past." He felt, even though it looked like he was in serious trouble, that it was not possible for him to withdraw from the primary without looking like he was leaving a lot of people in the lurch.

RITCHIE: Both Tom Connally and Walter George, having spent long periods in the Senate, read the handwriting on the wall when their reelections were coming up, and retired, while Fulbright went down to defeat.

MARCY: I happen to know in the case of Senator George that certain large contributors did tell him that the time had come for a change and he accepted that. I don't know about the Connally case. I suspect most people would look back now and wouldn't remember whether Fulbright was defeated or retired.

RITCHIE: Now from your perspective of ten years away from the Committee staff, how would you rate the three chairmen who succeeded Fulbright: , , and now Charles Percy? How would you rate them as opposed to Fulbright as chairmen of the Committee?

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MARCY: Obviously, I think that Fulbright was a much greater chairman than any of the three you have mentioned. Senator Sparkman was getting along in years by the time he became chairman. He used to fall asleep. He would sit in a public hearing and go to sleep, and I'd punch him. Senator Morse came to me one time and he said, "I think, Carl, you've got a responsibility to tell Senator Sparkman that he's got to see a doctor, because there must be something wrong with him. He's going to sleep all the time." I found that suggestion a little bit embarrassing. I said, "Well, why don't you tell him." And Senator Morse said, "Well, I think it would be more appropriate if you did." I said, "Well, I'll consider it," and that's all I did.

As for Senator Church, from the first day he walked into my office, when I was the staff director, it was clear he wanted to be chairman. He looked around the wall and saw these pictures of former chairmen of the Committee and he asked: "Where's Senator [William E.] Borah?" I said, "Well, we didn't start until after Borah." Senator Church said to me, "If I get you a picture of Borah will you put it on the wall?" I said, "Sure." Then he said, "Maybe someday I'll be there." He always had that expectation, and I know he was crushed when he was defeated. I discussed his qualities somewhat earlier saying that Senator Fulbright felt he could never quite count on Frank Church staying saddled, or firm on a position. I suppose you could speculate and say that that's what happened to Senator

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Church when he became chairman. I'm thinking specifically of how he caved in on the issue of a Soviet brigade in Cuba during hearings on SALT II. I felt that if United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

Church had held firm on SALT II we might very well have had that SALT agreement. It's hard to know, but that was one of the unfortunate things about our politics. Church had to worry because he was up for reelection the next year. To what extent his hard-line position on Russians in Cuba, led to this defeat, or would have saved him, it's hard to say.

RITCHIE: In a sense, he could never have out hard-lined his opponent.

MARCY: That's right.

RITCHIE: What's your impression of Senator Percy as chairman?

MARCY: Well, to my way of thinking, he is not independent enough. It is very difficult for a chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to take positions contrary to those of a president of his own party. That may be one of the reasons why Senator Fulbright looked strong. He spoke out, he broke early with Lyndon Johnson, and then he never felt much affection for President Nixon. Fulbright was a senator's senator, whereas Percy has one foot in the Senate and another foot in the White House. He never knows quite which way to go. He's always back and forth, back and forth. He obviously needs the support of the Republican party campaign committee in the next

page 261 election, so he cannot break with the president too strongly. I think you notice the difference if you think of the independence which say Senator Baker has shown since he said he is not going to run for reelection. He can be a Republican, but he can disagree pleasantly and vigorously for that matter. He seems to me to have an independence of the White House now which he did not have when he was planning to run. I think that Percy is not as independent of the White House. He's not his own man. He's a very fine individual, very thoughtful, and he can be forceful. But within the institution of the Senate I don't think that Sparkman, or Church, or Percy have a following. Fulbright had a following. Walter George had a following. Connally had a following. Vandenberg had a following. Green was there too short a period of time, and too far along in age anyway to have a following. But I don't think that any of the last three chairmen have had what I'm describing as a following. Senators would come to me and ask, "How's Bill want us to vote on this?" and then follow his lead. I don't know how many people come to Senator Percy and ask, "Chuck, how do we vote on this?" Obviously, my views are prejudiced, but there they are.

RITCHIE: Well, what are your views on the Committee itself, the Committee structure, the proliferation of subcommittees, the increase in the size of the staff? You pointed out the other day that there

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page 262 are only two members of the staff who are still on who were there ten years ago, which is in itself a major change in the old patterns of operation.

MARCY: Yes, as I mentioned earlier in our discussion today I went to my first hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee since I left, this morning, and there were fifteen or sixteen staff people sitting behind the senators' empty chairs, and there were three senators there, on and off. I think that's a sad situation. We talked much earlier in our discussions about the importance of the Senate having countervailing expertise. Well, there is a limit to the amount of countervailing expertise one needs. Committees must resist getting bogged down in minutia. Staff people are judged by how much attention they can get for their senators. I still think that most senators like to have a piece of legislation named after them. They don't say it, but when somebody says: "What did you do when you were a senator?" one can't very well recall that he voted for the MX, or against the MX. If a senator has his name attached to a piece of legislation--the Fulbright Act or the Percy Amendment, things of that sort that are quickly understood--it is helpful. It's interesting to me that if you look at the Committee today there are few names that the public is familiar with. I suspect a poll would find more people in the street who would recognize the name Helms than would recognize the name Percy.

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I think the problem is that increasing the size of the staff has tended to create fragmentation within the Senate, and I don't think that fragmentation as a concept is very good. I suppose you can say the same thing is true with respect to the executive branch: the larger it becomes the harder it is for anybody to know what the institution stands for. I continually ask myself: wh at are all these people doing? I don I t know. Here is an example. The day before yesterday, Senator Fulbright, who was to testify before the Committee this morning, called me up and asked if I knew what the subject matter was to be, and who else was going to testify. I called Bill Ashworth on the staff, who I had known earlier; he didn't know. I called John Ritch, who is Senator Pell's right-hand man; he didn't know. He said, "Talk to Diane Smith," whom I did not know. I tried to get to her; well, she was busy. Finally got a call back, after about three or four hours, by which time Fulbright had already written his statement.

I must give you one example of an idea which I gave to Senator Fulbright, which he used in his testimony today. He asked what I thought he ought to talk about. I said, "Oh, you can take your usual subject on empathizing with the Russians-- they misperceive us, and we misperceive them, and we've got to break those misperceptions down." I said that it occurred to me that the simplest way to make the point would be to look at the senators who were there and say to them: "You know, if you had been born in the Soviet Union, you United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

page 264 probably would be members of the Politburo, instead of United States senators. And what would you be doing if you were members of the Politburo?" He used that as a stimulus. It does provoke a bit of thought, because members of the Politburo got to the top because they had some of the attributes that senators have. Kind of interesting. But that's the first help that I've given Senator Fulbright for a long time--and it wasn't much.

RITCHIE: Moving beyond your observations on the Committee, what about the Senate as a whole? You worked for the United States Senate for twenty-three years, and you've been in Washington much longer than that and have been watching it ever since. How would you say the institution changed, or didn't change during the period you were associated with it?

MARCY: That's a hard question, Don, I'd really have to think about that. I should be able just to say it's worse now than it was at an earlier time, but that's superficial. I think the Senate still maintains a very significant role, illustrated by the fact that at some point enough senators get riled up about an issue so they finally stand up on their hind legs and shout. It took, what, a year and a half or two before senators had had it with [Joseph] McCarthy, just had it. At an earlier time, it took a long time for the Senate to wean itself away from Senator Taft, a strong isolationist voice, but finally the point was reached when enough senators moved in the page 265

UN/NATO direction. Same thing is true with respect to Vietnam. Inclination was to go along, give the executive branch what it wanted--provide the money, send the boys--but at some point the Senate perceived the disaster that was going on in Vietnam, earlier I think than did the administration. They perceived it earlier, I don't know whether they spoke up enough, but at some point they would have. Johnson's decision not to run quieted the Senate for a period of time. But I think by the time Watergate came along it was not just the feeling of power that was being exercised by Nixon, but a feeling that they had been misled by Vietnamization which was institutionalized in the feeling that we've had enough of Mr. Nixon, and Watergate sort of adds to it.

To answer your question without having thought about it more than this, let me speculate as to the future. I do think now, on the issue of United States-Soviet relations, call it arms control issues, that there is a growing feeling now that President Reagan and his administration have not produced what the Senate feels is absolutely essential to the security of this country: some kind of control, some kind of reversal of the nuclear race. At some point the Senate will stand up. They haven't quite done it yet on the [Nuclear] Freeze Resolution. They've done it on several general resolutions. They've only gone as far as the president himself

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has gone; nuclear war is something we would be crazy to do, but nevertheless we've got to be ready to do it. But I think within the Senate there is a

page 266 growing amount of backbone to insist the administration negotiate more seriously than they have done. Now, I am passing a political judgment, because one can take the point of view very easily that everything that has gone wrong in this world for the last twenty-five or thirty years has been the fault of the Russians. But rationally you know that's not the case. I think that more and more senators are feeling that way. I would guess that there will be a gradual assertion of power in the Senate.

Going back to the hearing this morning, Senator Percy pointed out that right now there are three treaties with the Russians before the Senate that have been submitted by previous administrations which the Senate itself has shelved and not acted upon. Most people think that the Reagan administration withdrew the treaties from the Senate. Not true. They're still pending before the Senate. And, as a matter of fact, all of them are being observed, even though the Senate itself has not given its advice and consent. In a sense, this shows the weakness of the Senate at this point in time. The Senate will raise hell with Mr. Reagan for not making headway in negotiations on arms control, but the Senate itself is not strong enough institutionally, is not sure enough of itself, to go ahead and act on the treaties before it. Two-thirds of the senators could give their consent to the ratification of the limited test ban treaty. Two-thirds of the senators could amend, or attach such reservations as are necessary to the SALT II treaty and send it back to the

page 267 president, and exert some power and some influence. They' re not willing to do it. At an earlier time, they might have. I would think that if Senator Fulbright were chairman of the Committee today and felt as he did then, and as he does now, he would view the fact that those three treaties are before the Senate as a tremendous opportunity for the Senate to reassert its role in the conduct of foreign policy. And with Senate leadership I think it could be done. You know, you could just embarrass this administration no end by the fact that President Reagan says SALT II was disastrous--what was the word--"fatally flawed." But we're living up to it! Been doing it for three years. It's silly.

RITCHIE: So you think leadership is the real key.

MARCY: I think so.

RITCHIE: Well leadership in some respects comes with the authority of the position. When someone like Fulbright becomes chairman, that carries with it United States Senate Historical Office -- Oral History Project www.senate.gov

some authority. But you've pointed out that none of the chairmen who succeeded Fulbright have had the same authority that he had. How does leadership develop in an institution that, on paper at least, is a hundred separate but equal individuals?

MARCY: Well, it takes time. It takes personality. It takes hard work. It takes an ability to have other individuals recognize a

page 268 person as an individual who knows what he or she is talking about. One of the problems of the Senate is that senators have so many constituencies that the have to worry about. They have to worry about agriculture, about trade, about labor problems. It's very difficult for a senator to become recognized as a great authority on anything. Fulbright very much confined his work to issues of foreign policy. He'd make pro forma speeches on agriculture and rice and things of that sort. Those were the sorts of things that his domestic staff would put into his hands and he would do his domestic duties. But on these other issues, the foreign policy issues, he thought about them, he read about them. I was going to say he knew the figures, that's not quite right, because that's one of the problems. To come back a little bit, there is a distinction between knowing the nuts and bolts and realizing that the nuts and bolts are there because of a policy or the lack of a policy.

I think Fulbright was a leader because he managed to keep his eye on the fundamental, basic, policy issues. To come back to our Church example earlier; the issue of a Soviet brigade in Cuba was certainly not a fundamental policy issue in the framework of the overall impact that approval of a SALT treaty would have had. I think sometimes that leadership comes from a person's voice. Walter George had a tremendous resonant voice, and when he would say some simple thing it sounded like it came from God himself. Those things are characteristics of leadership. And I think leadership within the

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Senate means that you can't be anyone's person. You cannot jump to attention when the president or the Secretary of State takes a position. You can't just say, "That's right." When one believes the president is right, you say it's right, but then people listen to you because they know very well that if you think a policy is wrong, that it ought to be changed you speak up, you say it. Too many senators, I think, keep quiet if they disagree with the president, or they make some innocuous statement. You can't lead that way.

RITCHIE: Do you think that a different type of person is being elected into the Senate these days? Are the types of senators that you were dealing with when you

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first came to the Senate considerably different than the ones when you left, or when you look over the scene today?

MARCY: That's a very hard question to separate in one's own mind and judgment. When I went to the Senate as a young man, the great people it seemed to me were Taft, Vandenberg, Connally, and Milliken. I'd look up to them because I was young, they were experienced, and powers in the institution. Now to compare a Vandenberg with a [Howard] Baker, it's just very hard for me. I think, for example, a Baker is probably, potentially, a great senator, had he stayed. And I think he may have other aspirations. But I don't see

page 270 anyone coming up through the Foreign Relations Committee at this point who to my way of thinking would have the stature of any of the people that I have mentioned.

RITCHIE: What is it that has changed the nature of things? Why is the political system no longer producing the Tafts and the Vandenbergs and the Georges and the Fulbrights anymore?

MARCY: Well, you see, you're making the assumption that I was trying to avoid. You are saying that those are the great people, and I was saying that I don't know whether they're so great because I have this problem of relating the past, which I admired, to the present, which I do not know as much about. If we take your assumption, I suppose we could speculate and say for some reason the Senate is not as powerful an institution as it used to be. But on the other hand, Don, who are the likely candidates for the President of the United States? This is something that has always intrigued me.

It used to be the governors who became candidates. Recently, we have had Governor Carter and Governor Reagan, neither of whom I think were very competent presidents. They could run a state which is quite different than it is to run the United States. So I tend to think that the best candidates for the presidency are people who come out of the Senate, perhaps out of the House in some instances. I certainly didn't agree with much of what President Nixon did, but Mr. Nixon did know a great deal more about operating in Washington

page 271 than either Carter or Reagan. Ford know more about operating in this environment than either of them. Kennedy knew more about it because he had had some immersion in the institution. Truman and Johnson knew this place. Yet the very fact that a person acquires experience in this town may be one of the reasons now, speaking in a wider framework, that the public resents.

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It's no longer good to say you were a great senator. The public is going to say: "You mean you were a senator when they voted for the ERA?" or when they did so-and-so. The problem with coming from the Senate to become a presidential candidate is that everything you did is on the record. Very hard to find what kind of a record Carter or Reagan had. You can draw some speculation from speeches that they have given, but they didn't have to vote on anything. Senators have to stand up and be counted. They have a record which may deny them a national appeal. Yet, at the same time, because they have had the experience of making tough decisions, and the experience of operating within a bureaucracy, which, like it or not, is going to be here, because that is where most expertise exists.

RITCHIE: It's a paradox.

MARCY: It is. It's a paradox. Let ' s see, are al I of the [1984] Democratic candidates former members of the Senate?

RITCHIE: Except for Reuben Askew.

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MARCY: Except for Askew. And surely if Reagan decides not to run the candidates will probably be Baker, and [Robert] Dole, [George] Bush, all who have had Washington experience. It's a hard thing. All are insiders. I guess Reagan is now an insider, although he seems continually to deny it.

RITCHIE: And couldn't run as an outsider in 1980, after he campaigned as that in 1976.

MARCY: That's right.

RITCHIE: Well, can you tell me a little bit about what you've been doing since you left the Foreign Relations Committee?

MARCY: I never looked for a job after I left the Foreign Relations Committee. I sometimes think maybe I should have. I might have become a lobbyist or something of that sort. But I did make a resolve that I was not going to be involved in going back and calling on senators or calling in chits, this kind of business. So, soon after I left I started thinking about the possibility of doing a newsletter, called the "Foreign Affairs Newsletter." I found a friend who helped me get started, and I did a few issues, and then I was invited to go with the Council for a Liveable World, which Senator [Albert] Gore had been with--when Senator Gore left the Senate he went with the Council for a while. For about a year and a half or two years, I had a very nice arrangement which provided me

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page 273 with an office, an annual retainer, and a secretary. I worked f or the Council, not buttonholing people, but nevertheless trying to give them advice on legislative matters that they might support. The Council was very interested in arms control and I did draft and managed to engineer a proposal where we got, I think it was three or four million dollars more for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency than the administration had requested. So I got a few things like that done. But I had other clients. One of my clients was the UN University, which was then being established in Tokyo. The Japanese were behind it and wanted the UN University there, but they couldn't get any money out of the United States Congress. So I represented them for a while, and some other private clients. One of the clients was an organization called the American Committee on United States-Soviet Relations, which had been organized by Fred Warner Neal, a professor at Claremont College in California. It was an organization which was set up to defeat the Jackson-Vanik amendment. I should say it started out with the concept of supporting the idea of detente, and the first issue was the Jackson- Vanik amendment, and I represented them, again not for lobbying purposes, but for sort of advisory purposes. It was a very, very informal group. It was not incorporated. It was most college professors, but it did have three very significant individuals as co-chairmen--John Kenneth Galbraith on the

page 274 left; on the right Donald Kendall, who was president of Pepsi-Cola; and in the center was George Kennan. That was the core group. When I left the Council for a Liveable World, I decided that this was an organization worth spending a lot of time with. They were willing to have me, so I became co-director of that organization, and secretary-treasurer, along with a lady named Jeanne Mattison, who had been a fund-raiser with the Council for a Liveable World. The two of us got an office and worked with Don Kendall and Ken Galbraith, and George Kennan. We incorporated, began to put out a newsletter, increased the membership. We now have an organization of about four hundred and fifty individuals who believe in negotiation instead of confrontation with the Soviet Union. It's now called the American Committee on East-West Accord, instead of the American Council on United States-Soviet Relations. We get about a third of our support from business organizations, about a third from foundations, and about a third from private individuals.

What draws this group together is they all believe that the arms race has got to be brought under control, that we and the Soviets have got to live on the same world. But they realize we can't make much headway in negotiating arms control if we do not have other kinds of relations with that other society, such as trade. So most of the things we do fall into the category of promoting non-military trade between the two societies, educational and cultural exchanges,

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page 275 and doing all we possibly can to support strategic arms reductions. It's a very interesting group. We hold one all membership meeting a year. We've just brought out a book called Common Sense In United States-Soviet Trade, which is going very well. It's a follow-up on a book with the same title which we did about six years ago. We did a book called The Common Sense in United States-Soviet Relations, which was taken over by a commercial outfit and republished as Detente or Debacle. We do Op-Ed pieces. We try to get on television shows, news programs, anything we can to promote a general understanding, to empathize with the Soviet Union a little more than we do.

Take the hearing this morning, for example. We persuaded Senator Fulbright, George Ball, Admiral Gayler, to call on Senator Percy last spring and encourage him to hold "educational hearings" on United States-Soviet relations. He thought it was a good idea. This was the opening session, and of the four witnesses there, two of them were members of our Committee, Fulbright and Gayler, so we were able to get our concept before a group like that.

I might mention, for the sake of the record, one other thing that we have done, which is very interesting. One of the ideas we had was to see if we could get all of the former United States ambassadors to the Soviet Union together. At first it was just going to be a dinner. The seven former ambassadors to the Soviet Union with whom Jeanne Mattison and I had dinner on this last Monday night

page 276 were Governor [Averell] Harriman, George Kennan, Tom Watson, Jake Beam, Malcolm Toon, Foy Kohler, and Walter Stoessel. It ' s a very interesting group. They come together, they talk informally. We don't keep any record except notes that I take. This project is intriguing to foundations. The Ford Foundation is sponsoring it now. So far the ambassadors haven't said anything publicly. I think they may. The very existence of the group, however, has excited another foundation, the Sloan Foundation, to prepare a "video-history" with the group. However, I am now in the process of leaving as co-director of the American Committee. I think, Don, I have gotten to the point in life where I'm a little bit tired of taking notes on what other people say, planning agendas for other people. I am now at the point where I want to be invited to come to things and express myself candidly as I have been to you, without having to worry about doing anything more than correcting a few points in the transcripts.

RITCHIE: Let somebody else take the notes.

MARCY: Let someone else take the notes, let someone else plan the meetings.

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RITCHIE: Well, it's appropriate that today is the fiftieth anniversary of United States-Soviet diplomatic relations, for us to be concluding this series of conversations. I hope from time to time we can update them.

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MARCY: Well, I hope at the one hundredth anniversary you're still here and can celebrate it.

RITCHIE: Maybe I'll be retired and someone will be interviewing me.

MARCY: That's a good note to end on.

[End of Interview #8]

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